Home Studio Tips: #7: Mixing- Groups, Auxs & Panning
Jan 7, 2015 8:27:54 GMT -7
Buzz Fretwear (Ignatius), Eddie, and 4 more like this
Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2015 8:27:54 GMT -7
OK Friends,
by request I'm starting this mixing tips thread.
I'm pretty sure most of the folks on the forum are mixing 'in the box' so even though mixing 'in the box' and on a console are related and most of what you do is very similar I'm going to focus a little more on 'in the box'. That said, I've worked on my 'in the box' mixing to very closely parallel the way I work on a console.
First we have to get some vocabulary stuff out of the way for clarity. It doesn't matter what rig you are using these things will transfer to all of them. Groups, Aux Tracks & Bussing and Panning
Groups: Every DAW or All In One recorder/mixer has some ability to group tracks. In order to do a good job mixing you have to have a handle on creating groups and using them afterwards.
Drums would be one group. You work on the mix of your drums and when you get them close you create a group for them so if you want to bring them up or down they will all go together. Sometimes you may want to leave the tom tom mics out of the drum group or just deactivate the group for a while so you can 'clean them up'. You need to be able to activate/deactivate the group to look at individual tracks or to change the mix within the group.
Other things that often get grouped would be instruments that have more than one signal recorded like the Bass (DI & Amp), Guitar (if you used more than one mic), Harmony vocals, Keys that have more than one mic and so on.
Sometimes you may want even groups with in a group. For instance, you may have 3 guitar parts that are all recorded with 2 mics. Each one has it's own group. After that, you may want to group all the guitars together.....but you would probably want to leave the lead guitar out of that group.
Another example like this would be harmony vocals. You may have a bunch of harmony vocals that sing together on the choruses. You'd get that mix together then group them but if you had one part that sang a single harmony with some words in the verse you may want to leave that vocal out of the group. In fact, this is where digital comes in handy. Rather than having to do moves on that vocal, even if it was sung with the others on the chorus, take those verse lines and put them on their own track so you have control of where they sit (volume, pans and effects) in the mix.
Aux Tracks & Bussing: All of your rigs will have a way to create an Aux Track. An Aux track can also be called a Return (as in you Send to a Return). Typically instead of putting reverb plugins separately on a whole bunch of channels the idea is to create a stereo Aux Track and put the reverb plugin on that Aux. You need to assign the input of that Aux track to a "Bus". In this case, a stereo Bus. We'll say Bus 7-8. To put reverb on a signal like a vocal you would go to the sends on the vocal channel and select Bus 7-8. You'll then be able to adjust just how much vocal you want to send to the reverb through the send on the individual channel. You'll also be able to set the pan on where that vocal will come up in the stereo reverb. By using this one reverb you save a lot of processing in your rig, you also get what we refer to as the "same room" sound. The idea that everybody is in the same room. Typically you'd use the same reverb for the vocals and any solo instruments, possibly the drums too. You might use just a tad of it on several things but you'll have real control of how much reverb through the send. When using a reverb on an Aux you'll always want the reverb set all the way to 'wet' with none of the direct signal coming back on that Aux track. That would work the same for an Aux track set up for Delay.
Later on we'll get into some more advanced uses of Aux Tracks and Bussing
Panning: Panning is pretty simple. Every channel will have a way to select where you want that sound to show up in the stereo field. That's the pan control. When we discuss panning we'll be using the watch/clock description like in drivers ed when the instructor told you to keep your hands at "10 and 2".
In a mix Panning gives you a lot of control. Some things typically want to be up the middle like lead vocals, bass guitar, kick and snare, solos. If those things are up the middle then it creates room on the edges. Panning is a 'to taste' type thing but if you think of dense records with a lot of stuff on them there are a lot of spots to 'place' things in a mix. Having 2 guitars panned L & R lets you hear both parts better. You may not want to hard pan (All the way L, All the way R) them if they are 2 different guys whereas if you have a trio with one guitar and you recorded one guitar through 2 amps you may want to pan those totally hard L & R. Also if you were doubling a guitar part you may want to hard pan it. On drums I do usually hard pan the overhead mics but I don't hard pan the individual toms. This is a taste thing but for the close mic-ed toms to go flying from one speaker to another sounds un natural to me. You can hard pan the Overheads because typically that's not a real close mic situation. Same with room mics.
This would be a lot easier to do all in the same room over a few beers. I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out but this is a start.
After we discuss Groups, Aux's and Panning we'll move on to other components of mixing.
I look forward to your questions and comments.
by request I'm starting this mixing tips thread.
I'm pretty sure most of the folks on the forum are mixing 'in the box' so even though mixing 'in the box' and on a console are related and most of what you do is very similar I'm going to focus a little more on 'in the box'. That said, I've worked on my 'in the box' mixing to very closely parallel the way I work on a console.
First we have to get some vocabulary stuff out of the way for clarity. It doesn't matter what rig you are using these things will transfer to all of them. Groups, Aux Tracks & Bussing and Panning
Groups: Every DAW or All In One recorder/mixer has some ability to group tracks. In order to do a good job mixing you have to have a handle on creating groups and using them afterwards.
Drums would be one group. You work on the mix of your drums and when you get them close you create a group for them so if you want to bring them up or down they will all go together. Sometimes you may want to leave the tom tom mics out of the drum group or just deactivate the group for a while so you can 'clean them up'. You need to be able to activate/deactivate the group to look at individual tracks or to change the mix within the group.
Other things that often get grouped would be instruments that have more than one signal recorded like the Bass (DI & Amp), Guitar (if you used more than one mic), Harmony vocals, Keys that have more than one mic and so on.
Sometimes you may want even groups with in a group. For instance, you may have 3 guitar parts that are all recorded with 2 mics. Each one has it's own group. After that, you may want to group all the guitars together.....but you would probably want to leave the lead guitar out of that group.
Another example like this would be harmony vocals. You may have a bunch of harmony vocals that sing together on the choruses. You'd get that mix together then group them but if you had one part that sang a single harmony with some words in the verse you may want to leave that vocal out of the group. In fact, this is where digital comes in handy. Rather than having to do moves on that vocal, even if it was sung with the others on the chorus, take those verse lines and put them on their own track so you have control of where they sit (volume, pans and effects) in the mix.
Aux Tracks & Bussing: All of your rigs will have a way to create an Aux Track. An Aux track can also be called a Return (as in you Send to a Return). Typically instead of putting reverb plugins separately on a whole bunch of channels the idea is to create a stereo Aux Track and put the reverb plugin on that Aux. You need to assign the input of that Aux track to a "Bus". In this case, a stereo Bus. We'll say Bus 7-8. To put reverb on a signal like a vocal you would go to the sends on the vocal channel and select Bus 7-8. You'll then be able to adjust just how much vocal you want to send to the reverb through the send on the individual channel. You'll also be able to set the pan on where that vocal will come up in the stereo reverb. By using this one reverb you save a lot of processing in your rig, you also get what we refer to as the "same room" sound. The idea that everybody is in the same room. Typically you'd use the same reverb for the vocals and any solo instruments, possibly the drums too. You might use just a tad of it on several things but you'll have real control of how much reverb through the send. When using a reverb on an Aux you'll always want the reverb set all the way to 'wet' with none of the direct signal coming back on that Aux track. That would work the same for an Aux track set up for Delay.
Later on we'll get into some more advanced uses of Aux Tracks and Bussing
Panning: Panning is pretty simple. Every channel will have a way to select where you want that sound to show up in the stereo field. That's the pan control. When we discuss panning we'll be using the watch/clock description like in drivers ed when the instructor told you to keep your hands at "10 and 2".
In a mix Panning gives you a lot of control. Some things typically want to be up the middle like lead vocals, bass guitar, kick and snare, solos. If those things are up the middle then it creates room on the edges. Panning is a 'to taste' type thing but if you think of dense records with a lot of stuff on them there are a lot of spots to 'place' things in a mix. Having 2 guitars panned L & R lets you hear both parts better. You may not want to hard pan (All the way L, All the way R) them if they are 2 different guys whereas if you have a trio with one guitar and you recorded one guitar through 2 amps you may want to pan those totally hard L & R. Also if you were doubling a guitar part you may want to hard pan it. On drums I do usually hard pan the overhead mics but I don't hard pan the individual toms. This is a taste thing but for the close mic-ed toms to go flying from one speaker to another sounds un natural to me. You can hard pan the Overheads because typically that's not a real close mic situation. Same with room mics.
This would be a lot easier to do all in the same room over a few beers. I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out but this is a start.
After we discuss Groups, Aux's and Panning we'll move on to other components of mixing.
I look forward to your questions and comments.